Brief Report: Memory for Self-Performed Actions in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Why Does Memory of Self Decline in ASD?

Yamamoto et al. (2018) asked adults with autism and typical adults to remember simple actions. Some actions they only watched. Some they did themselves.

Later everyone tried to recall the actions and say how they had learned them. The team wanted to know if doing the action would help memory more in one group.

Both groups remembered self-performed actions better than watched ones. The boost was the same size.

Yet the autism group still recalled fewer actions overall. They also mixed up whether they had done or only seen the action.

Wuyun et al. (2020) saw the same pattern in children. When kids with autism handled an object, their memory jumped to typical levels.

Fantasia et al. (2020) extended the idea. Letting children control the order and pace of pictures on a tablet also improved their memory a week later.

DeRoma et al. (2004) looked at source memory earlier. They found that giving contextual cues at test erased most of the autism deficit. Kenta’s adults still struggled even with enacted cues, suggesting the problem is deeper than context alone.

If a client with autism seems to forget, don’t rush to re-teach. The memory may be stored but hard to pull out. Add active cues: let them handle materials, repeat the action, or state aloud who did what. These steps rebuild the missing links and can raise recall without extra drills.